Graduate School Classes

I remember how excited I was at the peak of my undergrad success - the period after I selected my graduate school. My head was in the clouds; I was accepted into honor societies like Phi Beta Kappa, and my future, at least for 5 more years, was set.  Everybody congratulated me on my accomplishments and my parents were so proud of me. I never had faith in myself, especially in my skills and intellect (The topic of self-doubt and low self-esteem will be elaborated in much more detail in another post). So, I used these accomplishments to affirm to myself that I was capable of achieving my goals and dreams.

I had a whole summer break before I started graduate school, where I continued to be excited about my future achievements. I rewarded myself for 4 years of hard work by freeing my mind from school. When it was time for me to start my graduate school career, I still maintained a happy-go-lucky mentality. I clearly had no clue what I was getting myself into. I knew that getting a Ph.D. was not going to be easy, but I thought I could get through it exactly like how I got through undergrad.

Of course, my false perception of graduate school was quickly replaced by the reality of the situation. My first term in graduate school was definitely a wake-up call. At my school, first-year students have to enroll in a Foundations class, which based on the name, is self-explanatory, in that the class aims to provide the basics of biomedical sciences in order to get everybody on the same page. Also, since I am part of an interdisciplinary program, I do not have to commit to any field during the first year. Therefore, the class also introduces broad concepts that help students pick a specific program. The Foundations class was 4 times a week, 2 hours each. We also had Journal club that was 2 times a week, 2 hours each. For me, the lab I was rotating in was at an off-campus site that took a 15-minute bus ride, with the addition of a few minutes of waiting for buses. So it was very inconvenient for me to get to the lab in between classes.

The Foundations class was not necessarily an extremely difficult class. The directors of the course had good intentions, but the class was not very well-structured. The course was broken up into 4 sections: Macromolecular Structure and Function of Proteins, Signalling, Molecular Biology, and Cell Biology. After each block, we had a take-home exam that was due 5 days after. You may think that take-home exams are easier because we have the extra time to do research and write detailed answers, but I literally spent all those days working on the exam. The exam questions were more about using methods/techniques to solve problems. In theory, these exams could be beneficial to us because they promote critical thinking, which is an important skill to learn for research. However, the exams really tested us on how well we understood our lecturers and what technique they expected us to use to solve a problem, despite the varying ways to solve the same problem. Also, some lecturers based their exam questions from journal articles, so if people had good Google skills, which I did not, they would be able to find the paper and obtain the right answer. I figured that I would have spent the same time Googling as trying to figure the answer myself.

The take-home exams were exhausting to do. Some of the exam questions were very open-ended so I would just think and never stop thinking until I handed in the exam. During one of the exams, I was sick with the flu, which was probably stress-induced. I was working on a problem without stopping for 5-6 hours. At 11 PM, I still had 2 difficult questions left until the due date the following day. All the sudden, I felt very faint and experienced blurred vision. I was so scared because this had never happened to me before. At that time, the only thing I could think of was that I had low blood pressure due to low blood sugar. It was not dehydration because I was drinking water constantly throughout the day. The only problem was that I did not have any "sugary" snacks because I do not like sweet snacks. So I drank some cranberry juice and ate spoonfuls of sugar. I then rested for 3 hours, and hoped that I would not become unconscious. I managed to wake up at 1AM, where I continued to work on those problems until 7AM. I then headed to class at 9AM, where I was extremely brain dead! The following two exams, I learnt from my mistake, and bought Gatorade and sweet snacks.

There is a lot that can be done to improve this Foundations class to make the learning experience better. I ended up passing the class with an A-. Looking in hindsight, my dislike for the class is slowly diminishing. I probably just want to forget about it and move on with my research. So, for those of you who are starting classes in graduate school, you are not the only one who is struggling. There are always gifted smart people who do well in classes. However, those of us, like me, who do not belong to that category, compensate by hard work. Also, classes in a biomedical graduate program is definitely not important as your research. I know that in our undergraduate studies, grades seemed central to getting into anywhere.  I am slowly learning that by this point, people do not care about your grade point average. You just need to pass the class and do well in your lab to be well-published. Please do not stress yourself out with grades because there will be plenty of other opportunities in the lab to stress out!

Keep calm and PhD on :)

This is how I feel ALL the time.